Henriette Fuerth

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Henriette Fürth (born August 15, 1861 in Gießen ; † June 1, 1938 in Bad Ems ) was a German women's rights activist , publicist, sociologist and social and local politician of the SPD .

Live and act

Fürth was born as the eldest daughter of the Jewish timber merchant Siegmund Katzenstein and his wife Sophie. Loeb, born in Giessen. On her father's side she came from the clan of the high priests . It was a middle-class family that professed Judaism despite outward assimilation. She was her father's favorite daughter. She was guided by his liberal outlook: Ludwig Börne and the Frankfurter Zeitung shaped her thinking. The socialist Simon Katzenstein was her brother.

She attended the teachers' seminar at the Elisabethenschule in Frankfurt , but her father forbade her from further studies because, as a Jew, he saw no prospect of employment for her. In 1880 she married her mother's cousin, Wilhelm Fürth, who was seven years her senior. In 1885 the family moved to Frankfurt am Main . There Henriette Fürth studied at the economic section of the Free German Hochstift and began her social, scientific and journalistic engagement in 1890. Her husband is on the 1910 electoral roll of the relatively liberal Israelite community.

Henriette Fürth was considered a representative of the proletarian women's movement , which was oriented towards the SPD . She had already positioned herself as an opponent of Clara Zetkins in 1896 , when she spoke out against the fundamental separation of bourgeois and proletarian women's movements.

Fürth himself lived in a middle-class family with two domestic servants at times. When her husband went bankrupt in 1901 with his leather goods store and took a position as a housing inspector and paid secretary in the Israelite Aid Association, Henriette Fürth began to earn a living in the "Central for Private Welfare" and as a consultant and publicist.

She published, initially under the pseudonym Gertrud Stein , a total of around 200 essays and 30 independent writings on the socio-political issues of those days - in particular on the social situation of women in working life and on issues of sexual morality and hygiene - as well as a volume each with stories and poems . In the years from 1897 to 1915, 13 of her essays appeared in the Socialist monthly issue . From 1901 to 1907 she also reported on the development of the women's movement at home and abroad in the circular "Women's Movement". Your last major publication was in 1929 "The regulation of the offspring as a eugenic problem". Shaped by the discussion of neo-Malthusianism , she had always emphasized the importance of social policy measures to improve public health. In the end, however, she was able to imagine, in addition to the rational use of modern contraceptives and the issuing of premarital health certificates "in very special exceptional cases", the sterilization of so-called "hereditary diseases".

The first board of directors of the "Female Welfare" association in Frankfurt a. M., 1904 (Henriette Fürth = front row, second from right)

Henriette Fürth not only appeared as a speaker, but also founded the "Feminine Care" association in 1901 with Bertha Pappenheim . In 1905 she was a founding member of the Berlin branch of the Federation for Maternity Protection . She was a member of the German Society for Combating Venereal Diseases . She was the first woman to be accepted into the German Society for Sociology . During the First World War , she and her daughters ran a kitchen for the poor.

Henriette Fürth lived in the field of tension between Jewish faith, socialist convictions and a bourgeois lifestyle. She has not only turned against discrimination, she has also often found out about it from supposedly "progressive" like-minded people. Henriette Fürth was particularly against the discrimination of Jews, women and workers. She had been a member of the SPD since 1896 and for this party from 1919 to 1924 a member of the Frankfurt city parliament, the city council assembly. She worked in the finance committee, in the deputation for the school and health system and in the food office and set up a free legal advice center. She was involved in the Frankfurt Institute for the Common Good and in the socialist workers' welfare . In 1931 she received the plaque of honor from the city of Frankfurt am Main and the certificate of honor from the University of Frankfurt am Main .

After taking power in 1933, she was relieved of all offices and was banned from working. She lived in seclusion until her death; the last year of her life with her son-in-law, the district rabbi Friedrich Laupheimer (1890–1965) in Bad Ems . Six of their children managed to emigrate to Palestine and England . Her daughters Else (* 1881) and Marie Anna (* 1884), who had married the brothers Eduard and Henri Adelaar from Deventer before the First World War , were murdered in Auschwitz in 1944 .

Honors

  • A street in Frankfurt-Schwanheim is named after Henriette Fürth .
  • Henriette-Fürth-Straße in Gießen is named after her.
  • On her seventieth birthday in 1931, she was awarded the plaque of honor from the city of Frankfurt am Main and a certificate of honor from the University of Frankfurt.
  • The new house of the SPD office in Giessen, Grünberger Strasse 140, has been named after her since January 27, 2007, the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz . [3]

Henriette Fürth Prize

The Henriette Fürth Prize has been awarded annually since 2004 by the gFFZ, the joint women's research center of the Hessian universities of applied sciences. The Henriette Fürth Prize is awarded to the best diploma, bachelor's or master's thesis of a year on gender issues at Hessian universities of applied sciences. The prize is endowed with 500 euros. It serves the more targeted promotion of particularly qualified young scientists.

Fonts (selection)

  • Title page of housing requirements and number of children (1907)
    The factory work of married women , Frankfurt a. M. 1902.
  • Sex education in home and school, Leipzig 1903.
  • Cultural ideals and womanhood , Leipzig 1906.
  • Housing requirements and number of children. Contribution to the housing issue, at the same time a suggestion for the activities of non-profit building associations . Leipzig 1907.
  • The occupation of the female sex and the career choice of girls , Leipzig 1908.
  • Maternity Insurance , Jena 1911.
  • State and morality , Leipzig 1912.
  • Small war cookbook. A guide to economical cooking , Frankfurt a. M., 1915.
  • The fight against venereal diseases as a demographic, social, ethical and legislative problem , Frankfurt a. M. 1920.
  • The population problem in Germany , Jena 1925.
  • The regulation of the offspring as a eugenic problem. (Writings on the psychology and sociology of sexuality and crime, Vol. 2). Stuttgart 1929.
  • Forays through the land of a life - autobiography of a German-Jewish sociologist, social politician and women's rights activist (1861-1938) , writings of the Commission for the History of the Jews in Hesse XXV, Wiesbaden 2010, ISBN 978-3-921434-30-7 .

literature

  • Helga Krohn: “You should never bend over”. Henriette Fürth, woman, Jewish, socialist. In: Peter Freimark (Ed.): Jews in Germany. Emancipation, integration, persecution and annihilation . Hamburg 1991, pp. 326-343
  • Helga Krohn: women's rights activist, social worker, publicist: Henriette Fürth. In: Sabine Hering (Ed.): Jewish welfare in the mirror of biographies . Fachhochschulverlag, Frankfurt 2007, ISBN 9783936065800 , pp. 160–175
  • Irmgard Maya Fassmann: Jewish women in the German women's movement 1865-1919 . Hildesheim u. a. 1996.
  • Christina Klausmann: Politics and Culture of the Women's Movement in the Empire: The Example Frankfurt Frankfurt 1997
  • Angelika Epple: Henriette Fürth and the women's movement in the German Empire. A social biography . Centaurus Verlag 1999 ISBN 3-8908-5929-1
  • Henriette Fuerth . In: Franz Osterroth : Biographical Lexicon of Socialism. Volume 1: Dying Personalities . JHW Dietz Nachf., Hannover 1960, p. 91
  • Christiana Schwarz: Fürth, Henriette , in: Hugo Maier (Ed.): Who is who of social work . Freiburg: Lambertus, 1998 ISBN 3-7841-1036-3 , p. 192ff.

Web links

Notes / individual evidence

  1. ↑ Irmgard Maya Fassmann: Jüdinnen in der deutschen Frauenbewegung, 1865-1919, pp. 270 ff, 1995
  2. ↑ Asja Braune, dissertation CONSISTENTLY TAKEN THE UNCOMFORTABLE PATH, Adele Schreiber (1872-1957), politician, women's rights activist, journalist [1] , dissertation as PDF file, accessed September 1, 2008
  3. ↑ Christina Klausmann: Politics and culture of the women's movement in the Empire: The example of Frankfurt am Main. Frankfurt a. M. 1997, pp. 132-142, 341-344.
  4. ↑ Michael Schwartz : Socialist Eugenics: Eugenic social technologies in debates and politics of the German social democracy 1890-1933 . Berlin 1995, pp. 66-69. ISBN 3-8012-4066-5
  5. ↑ Sabine Hering: Jewish welfare in the mirror of biographies . 2nd Edition. Fachhochschulverlag, Frankfurt a. M. 2007, p. 189 . ; Maya Fassmann: Henriette Fürth . In: "Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia" ; Stambomen van Nederlands Joodse families
  6. ↑ Henriette Fürth Prize [2]  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Accessed September 2, 2008@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / dev.componeo.de  
personal data
SURNAME Fürth, Henriette
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Stein, Gertrude
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German women's rights activist
DATE OF BIRTH August 15, 1861
PLACE OF BIRTH to water
DATE OF DEATH June 1, 1938
Place of death Bad Ems